Organic Farm, butchery, holiday cottage and textiles in Aberdeenshire

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October 2018 at Wark Farm

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October 2018 at Wark Farm

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24-10-2018

Why DID the chicken cross the road? The joke chicken had had many and varied reasons, some of them even funny; I was thinking though of your more average, less humorous chicken. The answer I’m hoping for is: Because it can. Not quite in the sense that one (used in the most wide-ranging sense of the word) might set out to climb everest but not so far away either. Chickens, along with pigs, are amongst the most compromised of the farm animals that...

Wark Farm September 2018 Orders

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Wark Farm September 2018 Orders

Posted date:

19-09-2018

As promised on Friday I’m writing a rare second email this month with details of product available for ordering and delivery this week. It was great to see so many customers over the weekend at Banchory Farmers Market on Saturday and at Deeside Local Food Festival on Sunday; lots of great chat, tastings and food and farming talk - thanks as ever for being such an engaging and supportive community.
We are making good progress with the tidy up after...

September 2018 at Wark Farm

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September 2018 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

14-09-2018

As some of you will be aware we had a serious fire here at the farm two weeks ago and the butchery, shop and chill room were all destroyed. Thankfully no one and no animals were hurt and the damage, while extensive, is limited to property. Through the support of many kind friends and customers we are continuing to trade and have plans well in had for setting up a temporary butchery at the farm in another of our existing food preparation areas while...

Organic Your September

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Organic Your September

Posted date:

26-08-2018

As part of Organic September Wark Farm are holding a farm walk, talk and food tasting to explore the farm and our products. You’ll be able to come for a short, suitable for all ages walk, around the farm, learn about our animals, wildlife and farming and taste a range of our high quality meats cooked in different ways.

August 2018 at Wark Farm

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August 2018 at Wark Farm

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10-08-2018

I’m not a great one for sound bites and memes, occasionally, kind-hearted but mistaken people point out that I have a habit of sounding like one. I have a preference for depth and breadth of information on my chosen subjects, which is just as well considering the complexity of the natural, agricultural, ethical and economic systems we interact with here. While we spend most of our days focussing on these details, it is very necessary to lift up...

July 2018 at Wark Farm

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July 2018 at Wark Farm

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17-07-2018

During my years here my preferred way of sharing what we do has always been to put the land first, as far as possible letting the farm and our products tell their own story, restricting my role to nudging the information in the right direction. For myself I’m at my happiest pottering quietly away, spending time amongst the animals, immersing myself in the ecology of the place and keeping up my life-long habit of mud-larking. Over the past few years...

June 2018 at Wark Farm

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June 2018 at Wark Farm

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14-06-2018

I’ve written before about the challenges of trying to plan ahead in our farming system in the face of what appears to be a more erratic and extreme climate. I’m definitely getting older, though perhaps without the years of Methuselah my perspective is still too short to judge, but unpredictability does appears to be the new normal for now. Immediately after a long drawn out and gruelling wet winter we have now had one of our driest sunniest spells...

May 2018 at Wark Farm

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May 2018 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

14-05-2018

I like being an organic farmer. It suits my brain. I would so much rather think about how a plant interacts with the soil while it competes with it’s neighbours before it gets eaten by a herbivore and moves to Plan B, than calibrate a sprayer and measure out the right amount of a herbicide to make the plant move to Plan B. There is a little more to being an organic farmer though than enjoying being a sculptor rather than an engineer. A lot more...

April 2018 at Wark Farm

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April 2018 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

14-05-2018

I don’t mean to tease. I do have an interesting email written with news and views on the world of farming and food, but this month there is housekeeping to be done. Back to blogging & babbling next month. For now, and being all organised, we have a few little jobs to do if you’ll bear with me:
1. Along with all other businesses who hold customer data, we are required to update our records and systems to comply with the new data protection...

March 2018 at Wark Farm

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March 2018 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-03-2018

One of the main reasonsI gave up a perfectly sensible day job and career to farm at Wark was to have the freedom to experiment and try out new ideas for land management, particularly in farmland wildlife conservation. As a wildlife and countryside enthusiast ... re-phrase that, obsessive ... since my youngest years, huge amounts of my time and brain energy for over four decades has been spent in messing around in, participating in, reading and thinking...

February 2018 at Wark Farm

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February 2018 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

15-02-2018

A change is as good as a rest… well, anyway ... some changes this month. We have revised the order form to make it, hopefully, easier to browse products and prices before you place an order. It’s also more obvious how to specify what you would like. This makes it a little more restrictive if you liked to write a poem about the piece of meat you wanted, but is less confusing and easier for us to collate and manage stock. But there is still plenty...

January 2018 at Wark Farm

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January 2018 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

16-01-2018

Off we go again into a new year. Not that the first of January marks a particular change in the farm and food production year, there are far more significant dates in the biological calendar. As a business though it is marking a few changes in how we do things and it seems as good a time as any to share a few of these with you. Firstly, a huge thank you to all of you who stuck with us, kept buying, eating and supporting the farm through what was the...

December 2017 at Wark Farm

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December 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

At the risk of making myself feel old, I’ve had my radar switched on to the happenings in the world of small food producers, retailers and restaurants in the north east for quite a few years now. There have been a fair few comings and goings over that time, some of those that were well established when I started direct selling are still going strong. Some early pioneers have gone, through retirement or trading difficulties. A clutch of small business’s...

November 2017 at Wark Farm

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November 2017 at Wark Farm

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08-12-2017

Right now, in amongst a whole raft of things which are all about planning, developing the business and the future, it’s happily anomalous that my interest in the very basics, the soils that underpin all this enterprise, is stronger now than it’s ever been over the 14 years I’ve been wandering about this place. Through the various evolutions and revolutions the farm has been through of course much thought has been given to the foundations, we...

October 2017 at Wark Farm

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October 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

So, there I was.A rather shy child, obsessed with animals, the natural world, keeping slugs as pets (amongst a huge menagerie of other beings) and filling my wellies with water in any burn I could get access to guddle in. When not messing around in the country I was consuming books on the topic and announcing, at the age of five, that I was going to be a farmer. Two things back then I would certainly not have predicted were (and William Hill would...

September 2017 at Wark Farm

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September 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

It’s reached that time in the month againwhere I say sorry for sending the regular email a bit late. Sorry. By way of redress I can offer you some seasonal partridge this month, apologies they’re not free or anything but they are rather lovely. Not quite as exquisite as the grey partridge perhaps, these are red legged partridge, but still one of my favourite game birds. We have them available as oven ready birds, packs of 4 skinless breasts or...

August 2017 at Wark Farm

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August 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

There’s a fine line between sense and gut led passionin developing a business like Wark Farm. A mixture of idealism, vision, practicalities and reality checks. When going counter to the general trend in agriculture of course you want to be the part of shape of things to come, rather than the one steaming off in the opposite direction. There is of course no knowing on which path we are on. Food is a global business and as supply, demand, protectionism...

July 2017 at Wark Farm

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July 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

Taking my cue from a globe that seems to be keen on change i and the absence of a normal, and isn’t quite sure what the new normal is, if there ever actually was one, and being, personally speaking, generally quite happy for there to be no normal, we were selling at Banchory market yesterday and are doing the July open days this week.
IAfter an absence for a while, we have the return of venison on the list this month, local red deer, the free-range...

June 2017 at Wark Farm

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June 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

Welcome to this official, totally apolitical, sadly no party, broadcast from Wark Farm. Enough already.
We are offering Open Day Light this month, and no I didn’t say your bum was big in that. Sadly, and frustratingly, I have been in hospital for chunk of time since the May open days. Team Wark Farm have done a grand job keeping the fields afloat and the animals fed but I am under orders to ease myself gently back to work. Being naturally cussed,...

May 2017 at Wark Farm

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May 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

I discovered recently that the origin of the word bucolic is cowherd, when traced back to the Greek. And so through pastoral (the grazing of animals), via reference to the countryside in more general terms, to the use I most associate it with, being a romanticised, serene view of the countryside. Knowing its origins puts a much needed dash of earthiness for me into an otherwise rather disingenuous look at my world. There’s far too much drama in...

April 2017 at Wark Farm

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April 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

Counting down to lift off Wark Farm, we are ten days away from the ‘official’ start of lambing this year. It’s been an easy run through winter and up to this point. We altered our grazing management last year to leaving grass ungrazed in the autumn for so that there is fresh grass for the ewes now, a plan which has certainly benefited from the lovely spring days we’ve had. All being well it should mean that we won’t need to buy in any concentrate...

March 2017 at Wark Farm

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March 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

We have now had our full compliment of feathered signs of spring at the farm. It’s supposed to be swallows that welcome in the summer and they will be a while yet but for us the seasonal progression of wading birds, all with their distinctive and beautiful calls are so very characteristic of this piece of country as the days lengthen. Following it’s usual pattern the snipe numbers are reducing in the wetland as the migratory birds move away...

February 2017 at Wark Farm

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February 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

Long time customers of Wark Farm will know that the farm has been through a few incarnations over the years (they will also know that sometimes I’m very late with my monthly email, like this one, sorry!). The business was originally built up on a relatively large organic pig herd meeting a gap in the market in the area for good quality pork and we produced a wide range of fresh, cooked and cured pork products. A few years ago we stopped producing...

January 2017 at Wark Farm

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January 2017 at Wark Farm

Posted date:

08-12-2017

I was given a book for Christmas this year called the Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat. Coals to Newcastle perhaps for this particular farmer & butcher but in it the author explores the origins of the meat in our diets and hands on is involved in killing a number of the animals she goes on to eat. An admirable project, but you’ll have to wait for the book review as I’ve not made it far into the text yet. I know that the life and death...